The invisible damage done by Charleston’s smoking ban
Kevin Young has been a bartender at A.C.’s Bar & Grill on King Street for over a decade. He is a non-smoker who has worked in a smoking environment for most of his adult life, until now. Since the smoking ban went into effect, Young has consistently worked eight hours longer than he used to each week and earns roughly $200 dollars less each week. Visiting my friend Kevin at work in the early evening is much easier these days, because the ban has literally cut his bread-and-butter happy-hour shift in half. He says, “Bring back the smokers.”
His boss agrees. Says A.C.’s owner Jim Curley, “Profits in 2007 were down 80 percent compared to 2006, and that’s with the smoking ban being in effect for only half a year.” Jim admits there are other factors for the loss, but the smoking ban is unquestionably the “primary factor.”
Frankly speaking, more than a few experts agree that former Surgeon General Richard Carmona’s contention that exposure to secondhand smoke is as damaging as inhaling a pack-a-day ranks right up there with President Bush’s assertion that Saddam Hussein had WMDs.
As I write this commentary, I’ve actually been sitting in A.C.’s, simultaneously gabbing with Kevin behind the bar who has had only one other customer for the last hour — and that customer just went outside to smoke. It wouldn’t have bothered Kevin or me in the least if he had remained in the bar to enjoy his cigarette, but the government has already made that decision for us. As a grown man, it’s a bit offensive. As an American, it’s a little disheartening. And as a citizen, it’s ridiculous.
There was a time in this country when most Americans would have agreed, even those who hated smoking,
believing that government should have reasonable limits. But in an increasingly unreasonable world, such arbitrary power promises to become increasingly limitless, undermining and overtaking even the most basic American notions of property and principle.
Source: Charleston City Paper. Link
